For the Love of LOL

Katherine Eastland

October 24, 2008 2:14 PM

A few years ago, the LOL cat was born. Yes, that's right, as in "Laugh Out Loud" cat. In case you don't know what a LOL cat is, check out this website. It's chock full of oddball photos of cats--fat cats, fluffy cats, scary cats, behatted cats--paired with oddball pidgin-English phrases. You either love or hate this kind of humor.

But you are bound to love what Marianne Goldin, a University of Washington undergrad and freelance illustrator, has done with LOL cats. She wants to make a LOL cat art movement out of them. Wired's blog reported:

"Take ceiling cat," she said. "He's the god of LOLcat land. And to see him re-created in a 16th-century Renaissance-inspired oil painting, it strikes me as a new painting movement."

All this, just when you thought art couldn't get weirder!

With funding from the I Can Has Cheezburger? website, Goldin curated the one-night only show and auction "LOL Art" last night. Proceeds went to an adult literacy program. I guess if you can't help grammatically challenged cats, you help their grammatically challenged owners.